Vignette Struggles With Fourth-Quarter Results

Vignette reported a loss of $966.6 million for the fourth quarter Tuesday as revenue continued to fall for the content management software maker.

Vignette posted revenue of $52.5 million for the quarter, which was in line with the company's revised forecast earlier this month. Vignette's original forecast for the quarter from October was $62 million to $72 million in revenue. The software company's core operating loss, excluding one-time charges, was $10.9 million, or 4 cents a share. License revenue fell to, $21.6 million from $154.4 million a year ago.

"While the quarterly results are disappointing, we have taken immediate action that will improve our future performance," says Greg Peters, chairman and CEO of Vignette, in a statement Tuesday. "I am confident that in 2002 we can build on our market leadership position and on the market share gains which we experienced in 2001."

Vignette officials say the company has implemented cost-saving measures to improve financial performance but have not specified if the measures will include layoffs.

Earlier this month, Vignette announced preliminary results for the quarter, forecasting $50 million to $52 million in total revenue and a core operating loss in the range of $13 million and $16 million. Vignette officials also said size deal for Vignette also dropped from $300,000 to $256,000 with new customers during the quarter.

There are some bright spots, according to Vignette. Peters says the services revenue exceeded the expectations of the company and said customers and analysts were enthusiastic about Vignette's new content management platform, Content Suite V/6, which was launched in October. Vignette says it has approximately 100 customers currently upgraded or in the process of upgrading to V/6. The company also added 32 new customers.